"A wise and frugal government which shall restrain menfrom injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government." (Thomas Jefferson)

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Once again Wall Street Fat Cats of hedge funds and private equity funds have benefits that the rest of us don't have:

Romney's most controversial income tax break, carried interest, is only available to a few employees of hedge funds and private equity funds.

If you never worked for a hedge fund and private equity fund, there are tax rules that only they can use. Who was the lamebrain who put such a rule in the Tax Code? Was a huge proponent of the Bush Tax Cuts but looks like we didn't do our homework or we would have found the loopholes for the very wealthy.

Don't want to sound like class warfare but this is beyond ridiculous that someone who makes millions off of investments only pays a 15% tax rate when the only jobs he is creating come from his run for President. There is something really wrong and have to wonder how many in this very small group of elitist help create jobs or do they create more wealth for themselves. Looks to me like a lot of the wealthy of this Country are extremely greedy.

Will someone tell me again why we bailed out Wall Street which seems to have made a lot of people even richer. Still haven't come down off the ceiling with the bailouts and the Wall Street firms turning around giving their CEO's and others big bonus' with our tax dollars.

Our tax code is completely broken and needs an overhaul. Why should retirees who are getting a check for their retirement have to pay at the 28% tax rate in some instances for a fixed income when someone like Romney pays 15% on their investment income? There is something really wrong with a tax system that allows that to happen.

Why didn't the Rockefeller, Republican blue bloods take this into consideration when getting Romney in the race? Then they wonder why he doesn't do a good job of relating to conservative middle class Republicans. That doesn't take a genius to figure that one out. The man does not understand the middle class or the poor -- all he understands are his very wealthy friends. As I have said many times, you can see it when he has to try and work a room -- he is very uncomfortable. Almost feel like you want to hand him a pair of gloves who he doesn't have to touch the ordinary voters. It is the oddest thing I have ever seen but then most candidates don't limit questions to members of their church or staff either.

What a mess the RNC and the Bush 41 cartel has made of this primary, but yet they want everyone in the grassroots to turn our backs on our core beliefs for a man who we share nothing in common? That makes zero sense and why Romney has trouble getting people to go out and work for him. We will leave the grassroots effort up to the Mormon Church who wants him in the White House to spread the message of the Mormom Church which you are seeing more and more in comments on websites. Is Romney going to use the White House for Mormon outreach around the world? Romney and the elites of the GOP are going to destroy the Republican Party if they don't watch it and worst thing is they don't seem to care.

This will show you how the very wealthy from Wall Street maintain and grow their wealth starting with one Mitt Romney:

How Can You Get Romney's Tax Rate? (Hint: You Can't)By Bruce Watson Posted 6:00AM 02/03/12

In the week since Mitt Romney released his tax returns, the media has been abuzz with debate over his career history, his method of compensation, his amazingly high income and his incredibly low tax rate. Amid all the chatter, many pundits -- among them, DailyFinance's Dan Caplinger -- have wondered why more people don't take advantage of the deliciously low capital gains, dividend and carried interest tax rates that Romney enjoys.

The answer, of course, is that most people can't -- at least not on a level large enough to make a difference in their finances.

To begin with, Romney's most controversial income tax break, carried interest, is only available to a few employees of hedge funds and private equity funds. It's difficult to determine how small this group is: Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, notes that carried interest is a subset of capital gains tax, and is not explicitly differentiated in U.S. federal tax documents -- which means there's no easy way to separate out its beneficiaries. That said, the financial services industry as a whole employs about 5.77 million people, or about 3% of all workers in the U.S. Of that 3% few, only a small fraction are eligible for carried interest earnings.

Cream for the Top 20%

But, as some commentators have noted, anybody can take advantage of the low capital gains and dividend tax rates, and many families do: According to the Tax Policy Center, about 16.4% of all taxpayers paid capital gains and dividend tax on some portion of their income in 2011.

These lucky taxpayers are spread across the economic spectrum, but, unsurprisingly, the percentages are heavily skewed toward the richest end: 45% of all people who paid capital gains and dividend taxes in 2011 were in the richest 20% of the population, while only 5% were in the lowest 20%. The middle 20% -- the middle-est of the middle class -- only makes up 15% of investors.

And less well-off investors aren't exactly getting rich off their capital gains and dividends: In 2011, investors in the bottom 20% of the population brought home an average of $1,504 from their investments. On the opposite end, those in the top 20% averaged $43,202. In this case, the middle 20% are effectively lumped in with their poor cousins: Those average middle-class investors claimed about $2,442 in investment and capital gains income.

Tip of the Pyramid

At the top of the heap, the numbers get even more skewed. Among the top 1% -- Occupy Wall Street's bete noir -- 86.2% of people reaped some form of investment income, and the amounts were hardly chicken feed -- an average of $362,682.

But even the 1% paled beside the 0.1%, the super-rich, whose entry point is $1.6 million. On average, 94.5% of this group got some portion of its money from investments. And these investments paid well: The average take in 2011 was $2,275,145.

Romney, by the way, made out superbly even on the 0.1% scale: He made $20.9 million in 2011, and most of it came from investments.

Why the Poor (And Middle Class) Don't Invest

It's worth asking why more middle and lower-quintile workers don't invest their money. After all, a 15% tax rate is far preferable to the higher percentages that most taxpayers pay, especially when one factors in the Social Security and Medicare taxes, neither of which are deducted from investment income.

According to Think Progress, “NRA: Practice Range” is billed as a “network of news, laws, facts, knowledge, safety tips, educational materials and online resource” for the organization.The National Rifle Association released a new app on Sunday that includes a gun range equipped with coffin-shaped targets, and the option for players to simulate using a military-grade sniper rifle.

The app includes what it calls “9 true to life firearms,” and allows players to download an MK-11 sniper rifle setting for 99 cents. The rifle can shoot 750 rounds per minute.

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"We will be told that the causes of such violence are complex, and that is true. No single law, no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society, but that can’t be an excuse for inaction. Surely we can do better than this." President Barack Obama, Newtown, CT, 12/16/2012

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"I don't think that the way to correct a spin from the left is to try to impart a spin from the right.... [A]n information flow distorted from the right would be just as much a disservice as distortion from the left. What we really should be after... is accurate information. And I don't see what any conservative or anybody else for that matter has to fear from accurate information." M. Stanton Evans

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Former Senator Alan Simpson (R-WY)

“For heaven’s sake, you have Grover Norquist wandering the earth in his white robes saying that if you raise taxes one penny, he’ll defeat you,” he told CNN back in May. “He can’t murder you. He can’t burn your house. The only thing he can do to you, as an elected official, is defeat you for reelection. And if that means more to you than your country when we need patriots to come out in a situation when we’re in extremity, you shouldn’t even be in Congress.”

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"We are are an American family and we rise or fall together as one nation.

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John Stuart Mill was a 19th century political philosopher:

"I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it." John Stuart Mill.